Israeli Tech Firm Undercuts Facial Recognition To Bolster Privacy

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Big brother is watching. But in the future he may no longer be so all-knowing.

Riding the wave of a global push to comply with new privacy standards, a small Israeli company believes it can help you, and your face, stay anonymous in a hyper-connected world.

Startup - D-ID - Firewall - Recognition - Technology

The startup, called D-ID, says it has developed a “firewall” to block facial recognition, the ubiquitous technology that can now unlock smartphones, tag friends on Facebook, or help police pick out an individual hiding in a crowd.

The problem is that with facial recognition on the rise, hackers have a new target: huge reservoirs of profile pictures linked to personal information.

Companies - World - Money - Databases - Stricter

Companies around the world are spending big money to protect such databases before a stricter European law takes effect in May. Called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it gives people more control over their online information and applies to all groups that do business in Europe.

The idea for D-ID took shape a decade ago, when two of its founders took a trip to South America after serving in Israel’s special forces. Friends would post pictures online, but because of their previous jobs, they were forbidden from sharing pictures publicly in case they were recognized.

Way - People - Share - Pictures - Identities

They began looking for a way for people to share pictures while protecting their identities and a year ago formed the company.

The challenge was to foil facial recognition algorithms, which analyze a person’s face and match it to a stored digital image in the same way that crime scene fingerprints are run against a database.

Organizations - Identifiers - Access - Phones - Money

“More and more organizations are using our faces as identifiers, if it’s to access our phones, to withdraw money or at border controls. That’s why our photos must be protected, because unlike passwords, you cannot change your face,” said...